INFOR ERP VISUAL
Functional Overview
Infor ERP VISUAL Functional Overview
Text
TABLE OF CONTENTS
TABLE OF CONTENTS .................................................................................................................. 2
Introduction ...................................................................................................................................... 4
VISUAL Solution Map ...................................................................................................................... 5
Sales ................................................................................................................................................ 6
Quoting and Estimating ................................................................................................................ 6
Customer Order Entry and Invoicing............................................................................................ 7
Order Management ...................................................................................................................... 8
Product Configurator .................................................................................................................... 9
Price Book .................................................................................................................................. 10
Return Material Authorization (RMA) ......................................................................................... 11
Infor ERP Storefront ................................................................................................................... 12
Customer Relationship Management ............................................................................................ 14
Contact Center ........................................................................................................................... 14
VISUAL CRM ............................................................................................................................. 15
Production Management ............................................................................................................... 17
Manufacturing Window .............................................................................................................. 17
Concurrent Scheduling .............................................................................................................. 18
Shop Floor Control ..................................................................................................................... 19
Common Sense Throughput for CEO‘s ..................................................................................... 20
Easy Lean .................................................................................................................................. 21
Engineering Change Notice ....................................................................................................... 22
Barcode Tracking System .......................................................................................................... 23
Enterprise Planning ....................................................................................................................... 25
Master Scheduling & MRP ......................................................................................................... 25
Advanced Material Planning ...................................................................................................... 26
VISUAL Project .......................................................................................................................... 27
VISUAL Aerospace & Defense .................................................................................................. 28
Supply Chain Management ........................................................................................................... 29
Purchasing ................................................................................................................................. 29
Inventory Control ........................................................................................................................ 30
Interbranch Transfers ................................................................................................................. 31
Dimensional Inventory Tracking................................................................................................. 32
Lot & Serial Traceability ............................................................................................................. 33
VISUAL Quality Management ........................................................................................................ 34
Engineering and Product Management: .................................................................................... 34
Supply Chain Management: ....................................................................................................... 36
Task Management Workflow Tools............................................................................................ 37
Infor ERP VISUAL Functional Overview
2
Financial Management .................................................................................................................. 38
VISUAL Financials ..................................................................................................................... 38
General Ledger .......................................................................................................................... 38
Accounts Payable ...................................................................................................................... 39
Accounts Receivable ................................................................................................................. 40
Cash Management ..................................................................................................................... 41
Cash Book .................................................................................................................................. 41
Cost Accounting ......................................................................................................................... 42
VISUAL Global Financials .......................................................................................................... 43
Infor Expense Management ....................................................................................................... 44
Performance Management ............................................................................................................ 46
VISUAL Business Intelligence ................................................................................................... 46
Management Reporting ............................................................................................................. 47
VISUAL Microsoft SharePoint Starter Kit ................................................................................... 48
VISUAL Platform............................................................................................................................ 49
Workflow .................................................................................................................................... 49
VISUAL Messages (Event Management) .................................................................................. 50
VISUAL Data Import Utility......................................................................................................... 51
Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) ............................................................................................. 52
VISUAL - Configurability ............................................................................................................ 53
Engineering & Assets .................................................................................................................... 54
VISUAL DesignLink ................................................................................................................... 54
Infor Product Lifecycle Management ......................................................................................... 55
Plant & Equipment Maintenance................................................................................................ 56
Infor Enterprise Asset Management (EAM) ............................................................................... 57
Human Capital Management ......................................................................................................... 59
Human Resources ..................................................................................................................... 59
Payroll ........................................................................................................................................ 60
VISUAL Time & Attendance ....................................................................................................... 61
Education & Training ..................................................................................................................... 62
Infor EPAK for VISUAL .............................................................................................................. 62
Infor ERP VISUAL Functional Overview
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INTRODUCTION
Order-driven manufacturing is complex
enough—you don't want to guess every time
you quote a price on a job or estimate a
delivery date. You need to see, at a glance,
the impact of every order, constraint, and
bottleneck in your organization so that you
can manufacture at a level of speed and
efficiency that makes the best use of the
resources that you have. With Infor™ ERP
VISUAL, you can eliminate guesswork
because you‘ll be able to see the information
you need at a glance and make quick,
confident decisions. When you have a tool
that lets you stop guessing, you can start
delivering consistently profitable results.
Infor ERP VISUAL gives manufacturers the
ability to bring this type of order to your
orders. Your business doesn‘t ask for chaos,
but you get it every day. Every time the
phone rings, customers are making
changes, machines are breaking down or
vendors are late. Any of these makes
managing your manufacturing more difficult
every day. Doing the best you can isn‘t good
enough anymore. What if you could react
easily to any change or request?
When you see the effects of changes as
they happen, everyone in your company will
instantly know what to do next and you‘ll
accomplish everything faster. Infor ERP
VISUAL gives you the visibility to see your
progress now. Winning teams can‘t afford to
wait until after the game to adjust their
strategy. You can‘t either. Basing
tomorrow‘s strategy on financial statements
from last week, last month, or last quarter is
a formula for failure. Make adjustments
while you‘re in the game by seeing the key
statistics you need to run your business.
Infor ERP VISUAL helps you respond
effectively to all surprises to you can achieve
consistently great performance.
mixed mode manufacturing. Regardless of
your manufacturing method, Infor ERP
VISUAL helps you drive throughout your
organization. VISUAL allows you to cultivate
lasting customer loyalty by building a quality
assurance program that ensures superior
results every day. You can make quality
intrinsic to your process from design to
delivery. Whether or not your customers
require quality certification, they deserve a
quality product and VISUAL is there for you
to drive quality.
VISUAL provides an intuitive, full-color
graphic interface, point-and-click
capabilities, and robust search options that
allow you to make decisions and act on
them immediately. With VISUAL, you get
quick and easy access to the crucial
information you need to perform your job.
Infor ERP VISUAL‘s built-in scalability allows
the system to grow with the success of your
organization. Applications within Infor ERP
VISUAL integrate to provide enhanced,
customized solutions for productivity,
customer management, engineering and
estimating, quality, financials, e-business,
human resources, and payroll. This total
integration of functionality provides timely,
accurate information to everyone in the
organization—from the design engineer and
the shop floor foreman to the controller and
the payroll manager.
Infor ERP VISUAL supports your
manufacturing production strategies
including engineer to-order, make-to-order,
assemble-to-order, make-to-stock, and
Infor ERP VISUAL Functional Overview
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VISUAL SOLUTION MAP
Infor ERP
VISUAL
Sales & Order Management
Enterprise Planning
Customer Relationship
Management
Production Management
Performance Management
Human Capital
Management
Quality
Management
Supply Chain
Management
Financial Management
Master Data Management
Event Management &
Configurable Platform
Customer Relationship
Management
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Contact Management
Lead Tracking
Opportunity Tracking
Sales Forecasting
Sales & Order Management
Enterprise Planning
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Quote/Order Management
ATP/CTP
Pricing/Commissions
Order Configuration
Item Planning (APS/MRP)
Scheduling
Projects
Aerospace & Defense
Human Capital Management
Production Management
Performance Management
 Human Resources
 Payroll




 Business Intelligence
 Financial Reporting
 Planning & Budgeting
Financial Management
Quality Management

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GL, A/P & A/R
Expense Management
Multi Currency
Project Accounting
Serial / Lot Control
Product Configuration
Production/Process Costing
Shop Floor Control
Engineering
Supply Chain
Task Management
Workflow
Master Data Management




Master Item Data
Document Management
Bills of Materials
Multi Site
Infor ERP VISUAL Functional Overview
Supply Chain Management




Sourcing & Procurement
Inventory Management
Shipping/Receiving
EDI
Event Management &
Configurable Platform
 Real-time Alerts
 Workflow
 Notifications and Escalations
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SALES

Use a ―what-if‖ analysis to verify the
availability of material and capacity in
order to determine an order‘s delivery
date and then lock it into shop
resources.

Automatically print the pro-forma, quote,
quote log, and engineering cost report.

Automatically generate the vendor
RFQs (Request for Quote)
Quoting and Estimating
Infor ERP VISUAL‘s Quoting and Estimating
capabilities allow you to create professional
and comprehensive quotations, determine
realistic delivery dates based on material
and resource availability, and more
importantly, convert quotes into sales orders
and work orders when you win the business,
retaining the quoting effort and allowing
comparison of ‗as quoted‘ to ‗as built‘. You
can create quotes quickly and easily by
copying from another quote, an existing
work order, or a Bill of Material, then
modifying the new quote to match the
customer‘s specifications. Infor ERP
VISUAL computes a cost estimate that
includes material, labor, burden, and outside
services. When awarded a contract, you can
easily create both a sales order and a work
order from the quote.

Create, view, and modify quotes quickly
and easily using a graphical display and
point-and-click technology.

Attach customer supplied documents for
easy reference throughout the life of the
quote.

Copy a quote from another quote, a
work order, or Bill of Material and then
make modifications as necessary.

Separate markups for material, services,
labor, burden, and GSA.

Choose your quote price source, either
engineering specification, Vendor quote,
or standard prices.
Infor ERP VISUAL Functional Overview
Create quick, accurate quotes for common
products, custom jobs, and everything in
between with the Estimating Window.
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specific price lists, discounts by part and
customer, and online credit checking, as
well as customer-specific part numbers,
descriptions, and drawing numbers.
Customer Order Entry and Invoicing
Infor ERP VISUAL‘s Customer Order Entry
& Invoicing features allow you to access
complete sales order information instantly,
while providing your customer service
representatives with online support to enter
and track customer orders and create
invoices.
Infor ERP VISUAL is fully integrated from
the point of customer quotes through
customer order entry, engineering,
production, costing, shipping, and customer
service. This allows customer service
representatives to take action on credit
problems, reschedule requirements, and
release orders in a timely manner to meet
required shipment dates. It also provides
access to crucial data including general
customer information and credit status,
order backlog, material and resource
availability, order acknowledgments,
commissions, percentage of completion, and
shipping information. Comprehensive sales
analysis reports help decision-makers track
everything from customers to sales
representatives.

Generate customer orders from quotes
to automatically create order line item
details within firmed work orders.

Access online information including
customer open order balance, open
receivable amounts, last payment date,
average payment days, last order date,
and total payments.

Automatic signals of credit limits, aged
receivables, and item availability when
entering customer orders.

Access information about customers
including, but not limited to, customer-
Infor ERP VISUAL Functional Overview

Calculate sales tax by order or by individual line item.

Specify sales commission splits with
variable percentages.

Print pre-formatted sales acknowledgments, sales orders, invoices, and shipping labels, as well as comprehensive
sales analysis reports by product code,
customer, or sales representative.

Create multiple delivery schedules and
shipping addresses, allowing quick and
easy entry of Blanket Orders for
customers.

Fully support RMA (Return Material
Authorization) information for customer
orders.

‗Train of thought drill down‘ allows your
customer service representatives to
track and status customer orders from
this window – drilling into the
manufacturing orders and their status, if
required.
Use the Customer Order Entry window to
not only place customer orders, but also to
view and analyze information that allows you
to quickly respond to the needs of your
customers and your business.
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Order Management
Order Management allows companies to
manage a large volume of customer orders
and meet varied fulfillment objectives. The
application helps users manage customer
order allocation and new product
deployment planning throughout the supply
chain.
Order Management helps you achieve
optimized fulfillment, rapid order processing
cycles, cost-effective sourcing of inventory
to customer orders, and increased revenue
with capabilities such as substitution, crossselling items, and Value Added Services.

Save time processing orders with easyto-use Windows features and ―Drag and
Drop‖ capabilities.

Improve customer support, order
monitoring, and order maintenance with
access to detailed order status
information.

Confirm current inventory availability
and future availability.

Define primary and alternate
warehouses for each customer.

Track inventory easily.

Reserve inventory for priority customers
with future ship dates.
Infor ERP VISUAL Functional Overview
The Order Management window unites
order entry, customer order history, and
shipping functions in one easy-to-use
interface.
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Product Configurator

Configure your product‘s features and
options dimensionally.
The Infor ERP VISUAL Product Configurator
is a development tool for manufacturers of
complex, highly configurable products with
numerous standard and available options. It
enables your sales force to correctly
customize and configure your product and
quickly and easily create quotes and
customer orders in Infor ERP VISUAL. The
Product Configurator is sophisticated and
includes a compatibility engine that handles
all requests for changes to the base
specification through an easy-to-use
Windows interface. The end result is a
product specification that has been fully
checked for component compatibility and
completeness.

Maintain product, data, and price
information quickly and easily.

Create a quote and Bill of Material
automatically from an engineering
design.

Enter catalog numbers easily with
Product Code Nomenclature.

Integrate various toolkits for use within
the Configurator.
The VISUAL Product Configurator
includes both a rules-based engine
enabling accurate point-of-sale
customization, configuration, and pricing
as well as a parametric engine allowing for
the setup and creation of Bills of Material
and Engineering Masters based on userdefined criteria.
Use the Product Configurator to customize
products as you and your customers see fit.
You can create a set of options and
assign a series of complex formulas
which, in turn, define the possibility of custom parts, configured and priced based on
the customer‘s needs.

Create engineering designs for complex
engineer-to-order or configure-to-order
products using rules-based parameters.

Define engineering rules for including,
excluding, and combining features.

Define complex, user-defined formulas
for weight, quantity, and length calculations.
Infor ERP VISUAL Functional Overview
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Price Book
Price Book is a flexible pricing and
commissions tool. Price Book integrates with
the Order Management window and other
ERP pricing packages. The application
maintains its definitions in a separate
database from the ERP database, with
derivations available through an open
interface, allowing Price Book to be a
centralized pricing solution.

Establish price breaks based on cost or
quantity (e.g., spend $100 and get a
20% discount, or buy two and get 20%
off).

Set up prices by customer, part, market,
commodity, or groups.

Adjust prices ―across the board‖ to
eliminate redundant adjustments.

Use custom formulas to create any
combination of prices or discounts.

Define commissions for sales staff.
Use VISUAL Price Book to define pricing for
your products, discounts for your customers,
and commissions for your sales staff in one,
centralized interface.
Infor ERP VISUAL Functional Overview
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Return Material Authorization (RMA)
Infor ERP VISUAL allows companies to
manage Return Material Authorizations
(RMAs), documents that control the return of
parts previously sold and shipped to a
customer. The RMA document contains the
ID, status, and other identification about who
is returning the material and for what
purpose.
The RMA process assists in the evaluation
all of your costs around repairs and
replacements. Costing issues become
complicated when you have repairs and
replacements, especially when users take in
to consideration that the original customer
order may not exist in the system, or that the
parts being repaired originate from another
source. Infor ERP VISUAL RMA manages
this process for you.

Maintain documented control over the
return of parts.

Track information that will improve both
your customer service and overall part
quality.

Receive material returns for customer
credit.

Issue repair or replacement orders for
returned materials.

Support cross-shipping of replacements
(ship replacement prior to receiving
returned goods) for minimal customer
downtime and optimal customer service.
Infor ERP VISUAL Functional Overview
Use the Return Material Authorization
window to quickly address customer returns
and replacements while accurately tracking
your costs.
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Infor ERP Storefront
With each passing year, online shoppers are
demanding more. Whether your company is
a manufacturer or distributor of products,
your customers are expecting you to deliver
more convenience, information, and
services. Offering an attractive and complete
online catalog may have carried the day a
few years ago. But now your customers
want a higher level of service, such as indepth product information, a more intuitive
and capable search experience,
personalization, easy order entry, and
shipment tracking. And many companies
must provide enhanced e-commerce
services on a global basis, taking into
account a variety of currency, tax, and
cultural differences.
The bottom-line goal for distributors and
manufacturers with an e-commerce offering
is to increase product browsing to improve
order conversion rates and the overall
service performance of their site. To meet
this goal many distributors and
manufacturers are building on their existing
enterprise resource planning (ERP)
capabilities by implementing Infor ERP
Storefront to integrate and enhance their ecommerce capabilities.
Infor ERP Storefront's state-of-the-art web
foundation is designed to provide a worldclass shopping experience on both B2C and
B2B websites. Featuring a robust catalog
with advanced searching, order entry,
tracking, and account maintenance
capabilities, Infor ERP Storefront delivers
the capabilities distributors and
manufacturers need to automate selling,
servicing, and sourcing.
Infor ERP VISUAL Functional Overview
The solution has deep customer
personalization features, such as custom
shopping lists and wish lists that help
convince users that your website is best at
meeting their needs.
To help distributors and manufacturers keep
pace with demands for more advanced ecommerce services, Infor has enhanced
ERP Storefront with improved performance,
scalability, customization, search
capabilities, and overall user experience.
Customers can now scale components
across several servers for better
performance in environments with a high
user count or high product count. Infor ERP
Storefront has advanced caching to
minimize database access, and features an
optimized data structure to improve
performance and ensure data integrity. The
application is Java-based and uses XML
transactions, making maintenance,
upgrades, and product customization less
expensive.
With Infor ERP Storefront, you can:

Increase revenue by increasing
conversion rates and expanding online
sales.

Enhance customer satisfaction by
making it more convenient to do
business with your company.

Expand your e-commerce services
without burdening your customerservice staff.

Deliver a wide range of convenient
services to supplement core ecommerce activity.
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
Upgrade to new e-commerce
capabilities as business needs dictate.

Offer B2C and B2B services in multiple
markets around the globe.

Provide easy access to product and
account information for you and your
customers.
Featuring a robust catalog with advanced
searching, order entry, tracking, and account
maintenance capabilities, Infor ERP
Storefront delivers the capabilities
distributors and manufacturers need to
automate selling, servicing, and sourcing.
Infor ERP VISUAL Functional Overview
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customizable CRM Today Electronic
Bulletin Board.
CUSTOMER RELATIONSHIP
MANAGEMENT

®
Contact Center
Contact Center integrates virtually every
customer touch-point from one central
location. All business contacts, customers,
prospects, and leads are available instantly.
The Contact Center helps to automate
marketing and sales activities to track
performance and generate more revenue.
Highlights include:
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MS Outlook e-mail management
Direct Mail campaigns
Track calls, meetings, to-dos, history
Organizational charts
Custom reports
Account and contact profiling
Quick back office access to get a 360
degree view of a customer
Contact Center is offered as part of the
standard functionality within Infor ERP
VISUAL. It helps you retain your existing
customers and acquire new accounts by
tracking ―everything there is to know‖ about
your prospects and customers.
You can easily view histories, tasks, and
other sales data for every contact, at every
account. You can also access important
back office data such as accounts
receivable, current part inventory, return
material authorization (RMA) status,
estimates, sales orders, credit status,
shipments, and more.

Send e-mails, letters, and documents
easily with direct integration with
Microsoft Office.

Use the ―Mail Merge‖ feature to instantly
send information to multiple contacts.

Schedule and assign tasks and
activities, and track details such as
driving directions and meeting notes..

Convert prospects to customers automatically without redundant data entry.

Track calls, meetings, and To Do tasks
with Calendar Management.

Customize views and classify contacts
or accounts with user-defined fields.

Create organizational charts to easily
track account decision makers.

Develop on-the-fly custom reports or
view important data using the standard
reports included in Contact Center.

Customize the Navigation Explorer Bar
to execute other applications that you
use on a daily basis.
Use VISUAL CRM’s Contact Center to track
important information about your customers
and their colleagues.
Access your company, product, and
pricing events with the fully
Infor ERP VISUAL Functional Overview
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VISUAL CRM
Infor ERP VISUAL CRM (Customer
Relationship Management) provides the
tools you need to manage your prospects,
customer accounts, contracts, and sales and
marketing campaigns. Infor ERP VISUAL
CRM includes the Contact Center module
above, as well as five optional, add-on
modules to address your company‘s
individual requirements: Sales, Help Desk,
Admin, Field Service and Marketing.
Use VISUAL CRM to track your sales
pipeline from opportunity to closed sale.
Sales

Improve the effectiveness of your sales
team.

Develop price quotes and accurately
configure products using the optional
Parametric Configurator.

Convert quotes to estimates and orders
automatically without redundant data
entry.

Develop sales plans to chart the next
step in a sales cycle.

Create estimates using a direct interface
to Infor ERP VISUAL‘s Estimating
Window.

Assign quotas by sales representative,
territory, business unit, branch, or division.

Develop and analyze revenue pipelines.
Infor ERP VISUAL Functional Overview
Help Desk

Track customer calls and create a
knowledge base of issues and
resolutions.

Manage information with Help Desk‘s
automated record keeping and helpful
search tools.

Log calls according to Part ID, serial
number, product categories, and service
contracts.

Prioritize calls and assign them to specialists for resolution.

Track the history of each resolution
attempt, complete with a time, date, and
user ID stamp.

Track and invoice billable hours.
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Field Service
Admin

Deliver exceptional field service.


Manage service orders, warranty and
maintenance contracts, dispatch
scheduling, RMAs, inventory, and
billing.
Create custom applications as
standalone or linked to an existing
applications with App Builder

Extend existing applications with User
Defined fields

Secure user access to the navigation
bar, applications, reports, menus,
records and fields with Security.

View maintenance schedules and
assign appropriate technicians to
service orders.

Improve customer satisfaction by
managing inventory and labor to avoid
delays.

Trace issues by Part ID, serial number,
or service contract.

Enter service orders and search
customer records quickly (search by
contract number, serial number, or Part
ID).

Auto-generate invoicing and assign
charges to the General Ledger.
Marketing

Track the effectiveness of your
campaigns and events.

Maintain catalogs of marketing literature
and automate literature fulfillment.

Plan targeted strategies and increase
your overall marketing ROI.
Infor ERP VISUAL Functional Overview
Customer relationship management doesn’t
end with the sale. Use VISUAL CRM to help
you track contracts, provide rapid customer
service, and continue to build your
relationships with your customers.
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PRODUCTION
MANAGEMENT

Display a costed Bill of Material with
estimated, actual, variance, and
projected costs.
Manufacturing Window

Perform ―what-if‖ scheduling, availability
checks, and material netting with the
option to generate purchase orders.
The Manufacturing Window is the master
engineering and production management
application for Infor ERP VISUAL.
Manufacturing Window provides master
process definition, work order creation, and
the seamless integration to scheduling,
material planning, purchasing, and order
management needed to realize the
manufacture of products. Comprehensive
tracking tools provide complete as-planned
and as-built data from the highest level of
summarization to the lowest level of detail
for each individual transaction. This
powerful window is the catalyst for material
requirements, cost accounting, capacity
planning, production scheduling, and more.

Display a history by revision level for the
Bill of Material.

Create quotes and work orders
automatically.

Drill down to view labor and inventory
transactions without leaving the
Manufacturing Window.

Completion meters graphically indicate
progress of each work order.
The full-color, graphical interface allows you
to create manufacturing engineering plans
coupled with Bills of Material (BOM) quickly
and easily, then use the design to
automatically create a quote and/or work
order. The display and reporting features of
the Manufacturing Window provide a ‗at a
glance‘ view of the materials and operations
involved in the engineering process.

Create, view, and modify engineering
plans using a graphical display with
point-and-click technology.

Choose your view for the Bill of Material
and routings, either graphical, text, or
grid, single or multi-level, hierarchical, or
split-window. Or you can define up to six
custom views with color-coding and size
options.
Infor ERP VISUAL Functional Overview
The Manufacturing Window turns your
engineering plans into products and sales
through seamless integration with work
order and quote creation.
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Concurrent Scheduling
Infor ERP VISUAL‘s Concurrent
Scheduling feature includes two powerful
tools, the Global Scheduler and the
®
Scheduling Window , that work together
to ensure the most efficient use of your
materials and resources and provide the
information you need to deliver your
product on time.
Infor ERP VISUAL was the first software
system to feature Concurrent Scheduling,
which considers both material and capacity
constraints when generating your shop
schedule.
The Global Scheduler develops a schedule
for all firmed and released work orders
based on due dates, priority, and resource
and material availability. The Scheduling
Window allows you to view the schedule in a
full-color, graphical format. Zoom
capabilities allow you to closely focus on a
portion of the schedule or see the longrange plan of operations. The ―Drag and
Drop‖ feature allows you to make
adjustments to a ―what-if‖ schedule quickly
and simply by clicking and dragging with the
mouse.
Unlike other schedulers, the Global
Scheduler gives you detailed visibility on
each scenario or attempt it makes to
schedule a job. This gives you the most
visibility in the industry into your scheduling
constraints.

Choose finite or infinite scheduling;
optionally set individual work centers to
infinite within a finite schedule.

Verify material availability along with
capacity.
Infor ERP VISUAL Functional Overview

Use forward and backward scheduling
capabilities to make the most efficient
use of your resources.

Calculate and display critical path and
determinant path time lines.

Perform a capacity analysis to determine when too much or too little
capacity has been allocated to a work
center, and when you have excess
capacity for a resource.

Run ―what-if‖ scenarios to determine the
effects of changes in capacity, load, or
timing.

Use ―Drag and Drop‖ to make scheduling changes quickly and easily.

View the comprehensive audit trail of
scheduling attempts and results.
Use VISUAL’s Concurrent Scheduling
functions to help you manufacture products
efficiently today and to accurately plan for
long-range opportunities and changes.
18
Shop Floor Control
Infor ERP VISUAL offers you complete shop
floor control through seamless integration of
all its features, including inventory control,
material and labor tracking and reporting,
purchasing, and scheduling. Infor ERP
VISUAL provides complete control over
production operations, which eliminates
redundant data entry and ensures
consistency and accuracy throughout the
shop floor.

Generate work order travelers that
include work instructions, linked files,
design documents, pictures and bar
codes.

Capture and analyze all labor, material,
burden, and service costs charged
against each work order.

Schedule orders individually, by a
selection set, or collectively to monitor
the load on your shop floor.

Generate dispatch lists for your work
centers.

View the immediate status of completion
for a job.

Receive to stock or ship from the floor.

Ensure accurate inventories by linking
purchased materials to work orders.

Manage material requirements by the
job, by stocking levels, or a combination
of both.

Manage and conduct your business
based on up-to-the-minute information,
a result of seamless integration of order
entry, inventory, production, shipping,
and invoicing.
Infor ERP VISUAL Functional Overview
VISUAL offers a full range of reports to help
you analyze your production performance.
The Work Order Traveller provides your
shop floor with all the information they need
to efficiently and accurately manufacture
your products.
19
Common Sense Throughput for
CEO’s
Throughput is a measure of
productivity that considers the
contribution of a job or product toward
company profit. It is calculated as the
price of goods sold minus the cost to
produce it. Infor ERP VISUAL
™
Common Sense Throughput is a
strategy for using this information to
aggressively increase the profit of a
manufacturing company by working a
schedule that will increase throughput.
Through the use of the Common
Sense Throughput strategy, Infor ERP
VISUAL uses measurements not
commonly found in ERP and MES
systems. VISUAL uses the Throughput
Window to access a variety of reports
and inquiries: Actual or Expected
Throughput reports, and Utilization,
Contention, and Material Constraint
inquiries. These tools provide the
information to be discussed at the daily
Common Sense Throughput meetings.
CEOs can use Common Sense
Throughput to avoid incorrect
decisions based on allocations and
theoretical profit of a piece.

View an audit trail that reliably identifies
potential resource and material bottlenecks, both primary and secondary.

Create throughput data for an unlimited
number of schedule simulations.

Obtain accurate measurements of
absolute profit contribution.

Graph throughput inquiries at a daily,
weekly, or monthly level.
Infor ERP VISUAL Functional Overview

Drill down to view shipment, costing,
allocations, or work order finish date
information.

Compare and match customer orders
with work orders.

Choose to include unavailable or onhold inventory in inquiries.

Determine the ten most frequently used
resources by schedule, load/ capacity
ratio, incidents of highest severity of
contention, or user-defined time span.

Create trend graphs by shop resource.

View the past orders that have
generated maximum throughput for time
spent at bottleneck resources.

Determine the orders in the future that
should generate maximum throughput
for time spent at bottleneck resources.
Use VISUAL’s Common Sense Throughput
to identify ways to make your business more
profitable.
20
production, semi-finished goods, and
finished goods.
Easy Lean
Infor ERP VISUAL Easy Lean is a fastimplementing solution providing you
protection for your planning and execution
processes. It is a scheduling method that
delivers significant results within 30-90 days.
With a few small changes to your traditional
planning methods, such as setting up
shipping and inventory buffers, you can gain
visibility into your materials and production.
This visibility allows you to make better
decisions, release inventory at optimal
times, and smooth production flow. It helps
you avoid chaotic situations on the
production floor, take on increased
business, and ultimately drive more money
to your bottom line.
Whether you operate as a make-to-order or
make-to-stock company, Infor ERP VISUAL
Easy Lean can protect your on-time
deliveries through shorter lead-times and
provide the critical information you need to
overcome market constraints and increase
business and profits. Unlike traditional
scheduling solutions, Easy Lean focuses on
pulling materials through the shop
(Simplified Market Pull), which helps keep
your inventory levels low and your ability to
respond to customers high.
By incorporating shipping and inventory
buffers into scheduling, the system allows
you to protect both customer due dates and
constraint resource schedules, as well as
protect the availability of raw materials,
purchased parts, common subassemblies,
replacement parts, and finished goods.


Manage market constraints and
increase your ability to compete in the
global marketplace.

Gain visibility into your materials and
production, allowing you to make more
profitable decisions.

Respond to the market quickly.

Reduce on-hand inventory and shorten
lead-times.

Keep flow throughout production and
stay efficient with lean business
processes.

Avoid stock-outs and misappropriation
of goods.

Quote shorter lead-times with supreme
confidence and go after sales
opportunities requiring aggressive
deliveries.
Use VISUAL’s Easy Lean feature to keep
inventory levels low without compromising
your response to your customers.
Protect your ability to deliver on time
every time; protect pre-production,
Infor ERP VISUAL Functional Overview
21
Engineering Change Notice
The Engineering Change Notice (ECN)
module allows you to establish controls and
manage the process of making changes to
documents and drawings, parts, Bills of
Material (BOMs) and routings, work orders,
and projects.

Create an ECN process flow with
multiple ECN user groups and
notification systems.

Generate and track ECN tasks and
apply electronic signatures for approvals
and task completion.

Track ECN and revision history on all
parts, documents, bills of manufacture,
work orders, and projects.

Maintain an audit trail of changes to the
ECN record throughout the change
process.

Maintain a comprehensive audit trail of
changes to the Bill of Material and
routings.

Apply engineering changes to some, or
all, relevant in-process work orders.

Prevent transactions against parts and
in-process work orders while they are
under ECN control and notify engineers
and production personnel of pending
changes.

Update part or document revision levels
automatically upon incorporating
changes.
Infor ERP VISUAL Functional Overview
Use VISUAL’s Engineering Change Notice
feature to track changes to your engineering
processes and bills of material, notify
interested personnel of impending changes,
and ensure that your products are
manufactured to your specifications.
22
Barcode Tracking System
improve customer service.
To meet your inventory management and
labor tracking needs, Infor offers you Infor
ERP VISUAL Barcode Tracking System
(BTS).
Using barcode technology, Infor ERP
VISUAL BTS allows your enterprise to
automate material and labor tracking
processes, print industry-compliant
barcode labels, and eliminate data entry
errors.
Infor ERP VISUAL BTS offers three optional
modules: Automated Material Tracking
System (AMTS), Automated Labor Tracking
System (ALTS), and Wedge/PC Barcoding
to help you manage material, inventory, and
labor and optimize your workflow. It also
offers a label print utility that seamlessly
®

Perform PO receipts, as well as issues
to/from work orders.

Track and ship inventory in a timely and
cost effective manner.

Perform physical inventory counts more
quickly, easily, and accurately.

Optimize warehouse operations by
keeping inventory flowing smoothly
between locations.

Print barcode labels from any of the
industry-standard barcode thermal
printers.

Ensure inventory accuracy.

Improve customer service and decision
making with real-time information about
inventory and locations.
integrates Infor ERP VISUAL and Loftware
Print Server, providing barcode label design
and printing technology. Together with
industry-leading Loftware label design and
print software, Infor ERP VISUAL BTS
supports a range of customer and standard
label types.
Material Barcoding
Automated Material Tracking System
(AMTS)
By incorporating AMTS functionality, Infor
ERP VISUAL BTS uses barcode hardware
to help companies optimize inventory and
manage material and finished goods. With
barcode technology, you no longer have to
search for ―lost‖ parts or wait for batch
updates to perform planning activities. Infor
ERP VISUAL BTS provides the functionality
and integration that you need to control
inventory from receipt through shipping and
Infor ERP VISUAL Functional Overview
Use VISUAL BTS to eliminate data entry
errors and improve efficiency.
23
Labor Barcoding
Infor ERP VISUAL BTS helps you record
the accumulation of direct labor hours
expended against a work order, as well as
the accumulation of indirect labor hours not
specific to a work order. Infor ERP VISUAL
BTS offers two optional modules of barcode tracking: Automated Labor Tracking
System (ALTS) and Wedge/PC Barcoding.

Choose between single and multiple job
modes, and define either a time or cost
basis for prorating multiple jobs.

Track clock in, clock out, indirect labor,
and direct labor, including both setup
and run information.

Use integrated serial and/or lot number
tracking (available as an add-on
module).
Automated Labor Tracking System
(ALTS)
Infor ERP VISUAL BTS offers you the
ability to use radio frequency barcode
readers to track labor transactions in realtime using the Automated Labor Tracking
System (ALTS). Using the ALTS module
and the Radio Frequency (RF) scanning
system, you gain more control over the
labor entry components in your system,
improve accuracy, and promote real-time
access of labor information throughout the
company.
Wedge/PC Barcoding
Employees can use VISUAL Barcode Labor
Ticket Entry to record their progress on work
orders.
The Wedge/PC Barcoding module uses an
Infor ERP VISUAL workstation attached to a
wedge input device. You enter data via a
barcode wand or laser gun and the PC
keyboard. Entries appear directly on the PC
screen, allowing you to view more extensive
information than can be displayed on a
simple entry device.

Enter data quickly and accurately using
a barcode wand or laser scanner and
the keyboard.

Track labor information instantly.
Infor ERP VISUAL Functional Overview
24
ENTERPRISE PLANNING

Review and implement rescheduling
recommendations for work orders and
purchase orders based on actual
production and demand schedules by
severity exceptions.

Choose regenerative processing or net
change for level-by-level processing.

Peg MRP planned orders to the ―next‖
and ―top-level‖ assemblies.

Generate material reports with options
for netting methods, various sort orders,
and other filtering options.

Generate MRP by independent
warehouses; view supply and demand
separately in these warehouses.

Consolidate planned parts within the
Master Production Schedule.

Produce master schedules and
forecasts for any level in the Bill of
Material for any kind of part.

Maintain separate forecasts by
customer.

Visualize ‗everything you need to know
– in one place‘. The Material Planning
Window gives you visibility into both
Purchasing and Production plans.
Master Scheduling & MRP
The Material Requirements Planning
(MRP) module assists you in managing the
balance between supply and demand. The
MRP module provides a comprehensive
analysis of your material situation, including
the suggested action to restore balance. It
suggests when to release supply orders
(for either purchased or fabricated parts),
based on the most up-to-date supply and
demand information available. MRP helps
reduce inventory, increase manufacturing
productivity, and ultimately facilitates cash
flow.
Working with MRP, the Master Production
Schedule (MPS) module translates your
business plan, including your forecasted
demand, into a production plan using firm
planned orders in a true multi-level, optional
component scheduling environment. With
MPS driving the manufacturing process, you
can avoid shortages, costly expediting, last
minute rescheduling, and inefficient
allocation of resources.

Integrate forecasts, master schedule
items, sales orders, and firm-planned
orders for MRP processing.

Choose between various planning policy
options including discrete,
minimum/maximum order quantity, fixed
period, period supply, etc.

Explode all assembly schedules into
component requirements and choose
between including or excluding firmed,
released, unreleased, closed, or
canceled requirements.
Infor ERP VISUAL Functional Overview
Use VISUAL’s Material Requirements
Planning features to ensure you have the
parts you need to meet customer demand.
25
viewing summary information by time
period.
Advanced Material Planning
The Infor ERP VISUAL Advanced Material
Planning module helps you manage
material requirements by showing
summarized Supply, Demand and
Forecast information. The Material
Planning Window provides User defined
time buckets of planning information. You
can define the length of a time bucket to
be anywhere from 1 day to 1 year.
Because the data is summarized, you can
plan for the big picture without the need to
manually read and analyze all the details.
But when needed, the details are just one
click away.
The Advanced Material Planning window
displays user defined demand fences in
different colors so you will know if the
demand is real, forecasted or a
combination of both. Multiple forecasts
can be managed and displayed providing
additional in sight in the planning process.
Originally designed to accommodate the
needs of make-to-stock and repetitive
manufacturers, the Advanced Material
Planning window provides practical
functionality for the make-to-order
manufacturer with the bulk release of
planned materials. These planned
materials, whether for production or
purchase can be consolidated or further
delineated released orders.

Facilitate intelligent planning, viewing,
and managing of parts with multiple
Planning Calendars (i.e., daily, weekly,
monthly, etc) and multiple warehouses.

Drill down to view item details for
customer orders, work orders, purchase
orders, and planned orders while
Infor ERP VISUAL Functional Overview

Master schedule planned parts from the
Master Production Schedule window,
including manipulation/consolidation of
customer forecast data.

Be alerted to exception conditions and
view system recommended remedial
actions.

Firm multiple planned orders for a
variety of parts for a specified date
range.

Define Planning Bills of Material that
include sub-assemblies for real or
planned parts.

Create alternate Master Production
Schedule scenarios via Planning
Forecasts.

Identify multi-level part relationships and
specify the percentage of each
subordinate part to the parent.

Generate MRP by independent
warehouses; view supply and demand
separately in these warehouses.
Use the Material Planning window to
intelligently plan and manage your inventory.
26
VISUAL Project

Project Profitability Tracking by Project
and/or Business Line.
If you are a project-based business or a
professional services firm, Infor offers an
Infor ERP VISUAL Project solution that will
have you managing with ease and accuracy.
It‘s time for you to take advantage of
features that unite your project managers
with integrated data for capturing costs,
maintaining contracts and projects, handling
long lead-times, and delivering on-time
complex projects.

Bi-Directional Integration with Microsoft
Project.

Project Scheduling capabilities with
visibility to linked Production Orders.
Your project-oriented customers need
complex goods built to specification and
delivered within budget. Your project
managers need real-time integrated tools
to track revenues, expenses, and
profitability. Project Management
automates workflow, increases efficiency,
and, most importantly, promotes customer
satisfaction. This solution facilitates
teamwork and encourages the exchange of
information.
Infor ERP VISUAL Project helps you
control project lifecycles with tools for:

Separate Request for Proposal
capabilities with specific project
references for each estimate.

Multiple Project Billing/Invoicing
Methods, such as Milestone, Shipment,
Progress, and Time and Materials.

Project Budgeting and Costing by Work
Breakdown Structure, allowing time
phased comparison and variance
reporting.

Project Inventory Management, including MRP by Project, Commingling
Options, Virtual Project Warehouses,
and Customer-Owned Material Control.
Infor ERP VISUAL Functional Overview
Use VISUAL’s Project features to manage
your projects from request for proposal to
delivery.
27
VISUAL Aerospace & Defense
Infor ERP VISUAL Aerospace & Defense
(A&D) solution expands the Project
Management functionality in Infor ERP
VISUAL with additional Contract and
Reporting features for the Aerospace &
Defense industry.
A&D customers have complex
requirements and regulations. Their
contracts and financial managers need
real-time integrated tools to track revenues,
expenses, and contract compliance
requirements. VISUAL A&D automates
procedures, increases visibility, and most
importantly, promotes customer
satisfaction. This solution facilitates
teamwork and information reporting.

Project Costing by Work Breakdown
Structure, including Earned Value
Reporting.

Project Funds Tracking.

Bi-Directional Integration with Microsoft
Project.

Accounting Records compliant with
DCAA, FAR and CAS.
Infor ERP VISUAL A&D helps you control
contracts, project lifecycles, and financial
reporting with tools for:

Project/Contract Administration,
including flowing down of terms and
conditions.

Separate Request for Proposal
capabilities with specific project
references for each estimate.

Multiple Project Billing/Invoicing
Methods, such as Milestone, Shipment,
Progress, and Time and Materials.

Multiple Project Revenue Recognition
Methods, such as Cost Plus Earned
Fee, Shipment, Percentage of
Completion, and Milestone, including
multi-currency capabilities.

Managing and controlling Complex
Overhead Rates, including multi-year
rates, waterfall burdening, and retroactive rate adjustment capability.
Infor ERP VISUAL Functional Overview
Use VISUAL’s A&D features to easily
manage your A&D customer’s complex
requirements, track your costs, and
maximize your profit.
28
SUPPLY CHAIN
MANAGEMENT

Specify multiple parts and delivery dates
on purchase orders, approved vendor
lists for each part, and include the
vendor‘s and/or manufacturer‘s part
number for cross-referencing.

Generate vendor RFQs (Request for
Quote) that can be converted to a
Purchase Order.

Generate vendor purchase requisitions.
Route requisitions through approval
processes. Create Purchase Orders
from approved requisitions.

Use standard reports to review all
requirements not covered by purchasing; compare on-hand, on-order, and
allocated levels at a glance; and view
suggested purchase dates by part,
product, or commodity.

Book purchase accruals based on
goods received from the vendor
automatically.

Maintain Blanket Purchase Orders,
supporting multiple delivery schedules
and shipping addresses.
Purchasing
Infor ERP VISUAL allows you to easily
coordinate material purchases by providing
online decision support that simplifies record
keeping. It helps you maintain control of
inventory to enhance your company‘s cash
flow and shorten delivery times. Infor ERP
VISUAL handles all types of purchases,
including inventoried items, supply items,
outside service operations pertaining to a
manufacturing order, and subcontracted
items that require components being sent to
the vendor. Drop shipments can include
specific locations other than the primary
ship-to address, such as various
warehouses or customer locations.
Infor ERP VISUAL‘s purchasing module provides standard form reports such as
purchase orders, acknowledgments, and
order lists for purchasing personnel, as well
as analytical accounts payable-related
reports, including purchase order lists and
accrual reports.

Enter purchase orders, order receipts,
and returns in real-time and let Infor
ERP VISUAL automatically calculate the
adjustments to POs.

Purchase materials directly to a job
without having to assign internal part
numbers.

Link a PO line item to a specific job
requiring that item.

Issue materials to a work order when
you receive items purchased directly to
a job.
Infor ERP VISUAL Functional Overview
VISUAL’s Purchase Order Entry window
handles all types of purchases: inventoried
items, supply items, outside service
operations pertaining to a manufacturing
order, and subcontracted items that require
components being sent to the vendor.
29
Inventory Control
Infor ERP VISUAL gives you more control
over your inventory by providing greater
accuracy and immediate access to inventory
information throughout the company. Infor
ERP VISUAL automates the process of
tracking parts by adjusting inventory
whenever you create a transaction involving
a part.
Inventory items can be designated as
purchased, manufactured, stocked, or nonstocked so that you can immediately place a
purchase order or issue a job order when
you need a particular item. Infor ERP
VISUAL also allows you to easily track
material and costs on a per-job basis. The
Material Planning window provides an
online, in-depth, time-phased, netting
evaluation of your complete supply and
demand situation for your parts. The
extensive reporting capabilities of Infor ERP
VISUAL provide complete profiles of any
part in the system.

Assign comprehensive part definitions
including variable length part numbers
up to 30 characters long, extended part
descriptions, user-definable fields, and
supplier information.

Stock goods in one unit of measure
while purchasing, selling, and/or
consuming on a work order in another
unit of measure.

Assign multiple warehouse locations for
a part and/or multiple locations within a
single warehouse.

Easily transfer parts between locations
or warehouses.
Infor ERP VISUAL Functional Overview

Issue materials by work order,
operation, or sub-assembly
automatically.

Issue floor stock items automatically.

Set up specialized item pricing such as
quantity and discounted pricing, contract
pricing, etc., for both purchasing and
selling.

Perform automated physical inventories,
cycle counting, and ABC analysis.

Print standard reports including sales
and purchase history or an inventory
report of FIFO with cost.
Use the Material Planning window to
perform in-depth, time-phased, netting
evaluations of your complete supply and
demand situation for your parts.
30
Interbranch Transfers
From the Inventory Control module, you also
have the ability to perform Interbranch
Transfers. An Interbranch Transfer (IBT) is
an internal shipping document that allows
you to accurately track the movement of part
quantities between warehouses. Easy-touse windows allow you to enter detailed
shipping information, assign supply to
outgoing IBTs and demand from incoming
IBT lines, and ship and receive IBT
quantities.

Enter detailed shipping information.

Assign supply to outgoing IBTs and
demand from incoming IBT lines.

Track inventory between warehouses.

Receive up-to-the-second information
about parts and quantities.

Enter, ship, and receive transfers
quickly and easily.

View and control IBTs in the Material
Planning window.
Infor ERP VISUAL Functional Overview
Use VISUAL’s Interbranch Transfer modules
to accurately track the movement of part
quantities between warehouses.
31
Dimensional Inventory Tracking

Track inventory by location of pieces
within the plant for managing drops.
Infor ERP VISUAL‘s Dimensional Inventory
Tracking module provides you with an
added level of control over your inventoried
parts. Instead of simply seeing the total
inventory quantity of the item, you can see
the total quantity broken down by its various
dimensional sizes. In addition, Dimensional
Inventory Tracking allows you to issue a
specified number of pieces by dimension
and then lets the system calculate the
correct total order quantity by making the
necessary conversions.

Take a full physical inventory by
specifying the number of pieces and
their dimensions.
Using Dimensional Inventory Tracking, any
transaction involving a part causes all
associated values to be immediately
adjusted. This allows you to purchase,
receive, and enter a material requirement
simply by entering the number of pieces of
material, the required dimensions, and the
warehouse location. Dimensional Inventory
Tracking can also perform a physical
inventory when you specify the number of
pieces and dimensions of those pieces.

Define up to three dimensions and an
unlimited number of dimensional
records for each part.

Specify Unit of Measure conversions for
materials.

Calculate purchase costs automatically.

Issue/return from WIP as well as adjust
in/out for drop management.

Receive partial pieces that differ in size
than those listed on the originating
purchase order.
Infor ERP VISUAL Functional Overview
Use VISUAL’s Dimension Inventory
Tracking features to view your inventory by
height, weight, and other dimension
characteristics.
32
Lot & Serial Traceability
Infor ERP VISUAL Lot & Serial Traceability
module is designed for manufacturers who
require more stringent control over product
tracking. Lot & Serial Traceability provides
this control by creating a trace record
(known as a Trace Profile) for each lot
number, serial number, or other grouping of
a part, and by automatically tracking each
part as it flows through your plant. You can
assign additional information including a
description, expiration date, and other userdefinable fields.

Assign serial numbers to finished
products and components used within a
Bill of Material.

Trace a customer shipment back to the
raw material lot used to produce the
finished part. Cradle to grave
traceability.

Perform online inquiries by part for lot
numbers and serial numbers received or
shipped as well as inventory balances.
Lot & Serial Traceability tracks the part
‗cradle to grave‘, from receipt of materials
from the vendor through delivery of the
product to the customer, as well as all
intermediate levels. As jobs move through
the plant, operators are prompted for
additional information when receiving and
issuing material and reporting labor. Inquiry
capabilities allow you to review the flow of
material lots and serialized parts as they
move through the manufacturing process.

Customize part traceability requirements
and specify special tracking
requirements by part.

Assign alpha and numeric properties to
trace parts.

Assign lot numbers for purchased
materials at receipt or for finished
products coming from the shop floor.

Track raw material lot numbers.

Use the description, expiration date, and
ten user-defined fields to track
information for each lot.
Infor ERP VISUAL Functional Overview
Use VISUAL’s Lot and Traceability features
to track parts from receipt of materials from
the vendor through delivery to the customer.
33
VISUAL QUALITY
MANAGEMENT
Infor ERP VISUAL Quality Management is a
fully integrated enterprise quality
management system that addresses quality
assurance issues in specific areas of your
operations. You can establish, track, and
manage every engineering activity and
supply chain expectation while supporting
business growth and profitability goals. You
can create critical manufacturing specifications for products, processes,
equipment, and measuring devices, and
improve enterprise team collaboration with
vendors, customers, and employees.
Quality Management provides tools to
automate associated design, pre-production,
production, and post-production activities;
expertly manage business performance; and
easily collect, control, and analyze quality
system data.
Use Infor ERP VISUAL Quality Management
to work with teams of your employees, your
customers, and your suppliers to establish,
track, and manage every engineering
activity and supply chain expectation.
Engineering Project Management

Initiate and drive short- and long-term
engineering activities such as new
product development, new OEM
projects, and other critical activities.
Engineering and Product
Management:
Product Data Management (PDM)
Advanced Product Quality Planning
(APQP) and Production Part Approval
Process (PPAP)


Manage engineering processes from
concept and design through all phases
of product development.
Unite part master information, Bill of
Material detail, design characteristics,
and key production specifications into
one database environment to achieve
complete control over products.
Document Management

Infor ERP VISUAL Functional Overview
Centralize the location, change history,
and document audits for electronic and
physical documents.
34
Inspection Plans, FMEAs, and Control
Plans
Process Capability & Statistical
Process Control (SPC)

Maintain critical product and process
specifications with associated
equipment, device, inspection, and
control charting as defined in Product
Data Management and Process
Management.


Create inspection plans linked to
statistical process control (SPC) for
engineering review and evaluation.
Prepare control charts and perform
management direction, planning, gage
capability, process control and capability
analysis, sampling plan preparation, and
process detail documentation.
Equipment and Tooling Management

Use tools for preventive and reactive
maintenance, including equipment and
tooling lists, integrated ERP and
Preventive Maintenance scheduling,
work order generation, spare part and
equipment usage, Preventive
Maintenance records, and more.
Use VISUAL Quality Management’s robust
set of control charts to maintain critical
product specifications.
Calibration and Device Studies

Document, schedule, and track devices
and test equipment for calibration.
Integrated Process Management (IPM)

Identify problems that can positively or
negatively impact operations before the
product reaches shipping or material
review board personnel.
Infor ERP VISUAL Functional Overview
35
Supply Chain Management:
Nonconformances (NCM) and Quality
Traceability
Customer, Supplier, and
Employee Communication


Involve suppliers, customers, and
employees through documented and
addressed feedback, advanced quality
planning, and individual or team training.
Corrective Actions and 8 Discipline (8D)
Reports

Skills, Training, Qualifications,
Productivity, and Performance Tracking

Develop, track, inventory, schedule, and
perform time-consuming tasks involved
in managing human resources.
Detect, assign, and track continuous
improvement activities using complete
problem-solving details.
Manage assignments and performance
with the system-wide task manager.
Cost of Quality and Audit Management

Assess and control overall business
performance and establish best
direction for bottom line improvement.
Skip-lot and Vendor
Performance Management

Manage either manual or automated
ERP/Regular incoming and ERP/Skiplot
inspections for customer-specified and
internal receiving requirements.
Automated Preventive Maintenance (PM)
Scheduling

Schedule and track all preventive and
reactive maintenance.
Use VISUAL Quality Management to
continuously improve your products and
processes.
Infor ERP VISUAL Functional Overview
36
Task Management Workflow Tools
System-wide Task Management
and Enterprise Team Collaboration

Use the single point-of-reference
window, My To Do List, to analyze all
activities within the system, access
employee work overload conditions, reassess priorities, and assign additional
human resources.
Projects Management

VISUAL Quality Management tracks the
tasks assigned to employees so you and
your staff can see their to-do lists at-aglance. You can access the modules you
need to complete the tasks directly from the
to-do list.
Record, schedule, and track resource
usage and project assignment
completion.
Multi-Vendor Workflow

Manage your end-to-end e-business
strategy from product conceptualization
to multi-site worldwide distribution with
the manufacturing business process as
the central point.
E-mail Integration

Employ e-mail messaging in conjunction
with direct database-driven notification
and activity tracking for individuals
inside and outside the company.
Infor ERP VISUAL Functional Overview
37
FINANCIAL MANAGEMENT

Select the G/L reporting calendar
method; Monthly, 4-4-5, 13 Period, or a
user-defined value.
VISUAL Financials

Create multiple financial entities for
consolidated reporting.
Infor ERP VISUAL Financials provides a
total enterprise solution for your accounting
needs. Infor ERP VISUAL Financials helps
you compete in the global marketplace by
offering multi-currency capabilities and
handling consolidation of disparate charts of
accounts between subsidiaries as well as
differing system currencies. You can
automatically create vouchers, generate
invoices and credit memos, write checks onthe-fly, create customized reports, and post
to journals.

Take advantage of Infor ERP VISUAL‘s
full multi-currency support.

Create recurring journals, reversal
journals, and rules based allocations.

Post to multiple fiscal periods (including
the future year), subject to definable
controls.

Post journals created in Infor ERP
VISUAL and Infor ERP VISUAL Payroll
to eliminate repetitive data entry and
ensure data integrity.
Infor ERP VISUAL Financials includes
Accounts Payable, Accounts Receivable,
General Ledger, Cash Management, and
Cash Book, which fully integrate with Infor
ERP VISUAL and allow for the seamless
transfer of information. This ensures
information is accurate and current, and
eliminates the need for repetitive data
entry. Each of the Infor ERP VISUAL
Financials modules is a fully functional
system within itself—together they
comprise a powerful set of tools for
addressing the total accounting needs of
your business.

Review financial information by printing
standard G/L reports.

Create customized financial reports with
the G/L Report Writer; including
alternate G/L structures based on user
defined groupings, multi-periods, and
budget comparisons.
General Ledger

Define a Chart of Accounts that mirrors
your enterprise structure.

Multi-Graphical display options available
for G/L review, including multi-level drilldown from batch to transaction levels
Infor ERP VISUAL Functional Overview
Use VISUAL Financials to accurately and
efficiently address all of your enterprise’s
accounting needs.
38
Accounts Payable

Create vouchers automatically through
POs/receipts matching. Including Subtotal and Grand Total amount details.

Apply credit memos to open vendor
invoices.

Create recurring vouchers and specify
the frequency.

Assign vendor accounts to specific A/P
control accounts on the G/L.

Print vendor checks for invoices
scheduled for payment.

Review extensive A/P information
available on standard A/P reports.

Create journal entries for Infor ERP
VISUAL Financials General Ledger as a
result of A/P processing.

Update miscellaneous charges to a
work order and job cost information
automatically in Infor ERP VISUAL from
A/P invoices.

Create and maintain multiple remit-to
addresses.

Allow for a flexible payment schedule
negotiated with any of your vendors.

Write checks ―on-the-fly‖ in support of
immediate payment of invoices.

Value added tax and duty reporting
capabilities.

Ability to record Landed costs and
freight charges.

Multiple means of identifying and drilling
down for payment history; including
Vendor Inquiry and Document Lifecycle
views.
Infor ERP VISUAL Functional Overview
Link invoices directly to purchase orders for
accurate payments.
Easily follow your purchases from purchase
requisition to purchase receipt to payment.
39
Accounts Receivable

Generate A/R invoices automatically
from shipping activities in Infor ERP
VISUAL.

Assign customer accounts to specific
A/R control accounts on the G/L.

Report customer prepayment and have
Infor ERP VISUAL automatically deduct
the amount of the prepayment or credit
from the invoice total.

Generate credit memos from returns in
Infor ERP VISUAL.

Create credit memos for price
adjustments, then apply them to open
invoices.

Apply cash receipts to specific customer
invoices and determine how
overpayments and underpayments
should be handled.

Review extensive A/R information
available on standard A/R reports such
as Aged Receivables, Customer History,
and Customer Statements.

On-screen review with drill-back
capabilities using Document Lifecycle
views or Customer inquiry.

Create journal entries for Infor ERP
VISUAL Financials General Ledger as a
result of A/R processing.

Share A/R customer payment and credit
data with Infor ERP VISUAL.

Manage credit risk customers with
Collection Schedules.

Apply Collection Notes to provide diarytracking capability for Credit
Management.
Infor ERP VISUAL Functional Overview
You can create customer invoices in a
variety of ways -- automatically during the
shipping process, as stand-alone invoices,
or recurring invoices.
You can view the quotes, orders, shipments,
return material authorizations, and payments
associated with the invoice.
40
Cash Management
Cash Book

Predict future cash flows, based on
actual trends, through the use of the
online, real-time capability of Cash
Management.

Mirror the bank statement and filter the
Cash Book display to view only those
items that correspond to the period
covered.

Filter cash plans by specific corporate
entity or combine multiple entities for a
consolidated view of your organization‘s
cash position and/or forecast.

Post bank adjustments to the G/L during
the reconciliation process.

Set cleared items individually, by range
or by group, and mark as cleared.

Add multiple or single line adjustments
with the click of a button.

Drill down and open any item in its
native context, simply by double-clicking
on the desired record line.

Create unlimited cash plans.

Integrate actual cash performance, as
well as projected and forecast data.

Use the Setup Wizard to guide you
through the creation process.

Choose between multiple view
capabilities to turn off/on actual,
projected, and forecasted data.

Balance display control totals to easily
check and compare to bank control
totals.

Customize your window with various
graphical display capabilities.

Generate standard reports including:

Generate standard performance reports
for payment, receipts, and shipments.
•
Cash receipts register
•
Cash payments register
•
Cash Book
•
Bank Reconciliation
Use VISUAL Financials’ Cash Management
window to develop accurate cash flow
forecasts and review actual cash flow data.
Infor ERP VISUAL Functional Overview
41
Cost Accounting
The Cost Accounting features within Infor
ERP VISUAL support both actual costing
and standard costing, providing you with
the flexibility to choose the method that
works best for you. Infor ERP VISUAL
captures costs as changes occur, ensuring
up-to-date and accurate costing. You can
also link purchases directly to existing work
orders through the Purchasing or
Manufacturing module, earmarking costs
specific to the appropriate job.
Additionally, you can link work orders to
specific customer orders, which allows you
to know the true margin earned for each
customer order. Infor ERP VISUAL
automatically charges work order costs for
customer orders to the Cost of Goods Sold
upon shipment to the customer.

Automatically update stockroom and
WIP inventory records in real-time.

Link POs to work orders to capture
costs for a job.

Link work orders to customer orders to
measure true margins.

Calculate actual costs for a one-time or
limited run production without having to
add part numbers.

Directly charge jobs for expense items
not listed on a PO.

Create and post manufacturing journals
to the General Ledger quickly and
easily.
Infor ERP VISUAL Functional Overview
View real-time cost information directly in
the Manufacturing Window to see if your
jobs are coming in on budget.
42
VISUAL Global Financials
Infor ERP VISUAL Global Financials is
designed specifically to meet the
requirements of companies operating
multiple entities, divisions, sites, and
subsidiaries around the world. It is a
transaction-based business management
tool that helps companies effectively handle
customer and supplier relationships, as well
as comparatively monitor business
performance across various levels of an
organization.
Infor ERP VISUAL Global Financials
enables companies to work within a multicompany and multi-currency environment
with support for global consolidation. The
application allows users to document all
production and warehouse-related financial
transactions and to segment financial data
into appropriate entities for improved
statistical and budget tracking and reporting.
It promotes faster, accurate, real-time
transactions and provides managers across
all levels of the company with the
information they need to make more
informed business decisions.
Infor ERP VISUAL Global Financials is an
advanced application to help manage all of
your company‘s accounting and cash management demands.

Real-time processing of financial
transactions.

Segment financial information into
appropriate entities and business components for improved tracking and
reporting.
Infor ERP VISUAL Functional Overview

Work within a multi-company and multicurrency environment with support for
global consolidation.

Maintain customer and supplier
relationships.

Manage data security with a userfriendly inquiry system.

Create Consolidated and Consolidating
Financial Statements.

Import/Export data through the
Consolidation Process and/or Microsoft
Excel

Allow users to configure their personal
browse windows.

Define Supplier/Customer groups for
enhanced report filtering capabilities.
Use VISUAL Global Financials to manage
your multi-country, multi-currency
accounting and cash management needs.
43
Infor Expense Management
Employee-initiated expenses can account
for a surprisingly large percentage of total
corporate spending. In challenging
economic times, companies that can‘t track,
analyze, and control these expenditures are
missing an important opportunity for cost
savings.
Consider, for example, the cost of
unnecessary travel, unauthorized
purchases, unused discounts and rebates,
honest expense report errors, and underbilled clients. Other hidden costs can include
the time and effort spent on administrative
duties related to accounting for expenses
and payments, as well as outright fraud.
Organizations that gain control over
employee-initiated spending and automate
expense-related processes can see
dramatic benefits to the bottom line.
More than just an end-to-end travel expense
management solution, Infor Expense
Management enables employees to plan
and expense business travel; request and
approve payment requests; capture time for
charging to projects and cost centers; and
calculate paid time off and overtime. These
integrated applications share a single,
intuitive interface, making them easy to
learn, use, and maintain. With Expense
Management, the result is comprehensive
control over employee-initiated corporate
spending.
Infor Expense Management allows even
complex, multinational organizations to
automate expense-related business
processes and enforce policy compliance,
reducing associated administrative costs
and decreasing the opportunity for
accidental error and intentional fraud. With
Infor ERP VISUAL Functional Overview
Expense Management, you can implement
instantaneous global updates to policies and
processes to support continuous
improvement, while simultaneously
managing local policies and statutory
requirements.
Expense Management includes four core
modules: Travel Plans, Reports, Payment
Requests, and Timesheets. Each module
features real-time policy notification, alerting
employees to violations as they enter data
and allowing them to provide explanations or
make corrections before submitting plans or
expenses; configurable workflow for alerting
reviewers, obtaining necessary approvals,
and then triggering events such as the
issuance of plane tickets or the
reimbursement of expenses; and business
intelligence tools to analyze the solution‘s
database and search for opportunities to
transform spending into savings.
These applications work where you do—in
your office, on the road, and around the
globe. They support multiple languages and
currencies, work with all international date
and currency formats, and enable you to
apply rules and policies specific to
independent divisions or geographic
locations. Expense Management also
accommodates country-specific per diem
rates, local taxation requirements, variable
VAT rates, and mileage rates.
Benefits include:

Improve employee compliance with
spending policies

Lower administrative costs

Increase savings through effective
vendor negotiation and rebate usage
44

Reduce unnecessary travel and
purchases

Reduce people needed to process
documents

Reduce manager time spent on
approvals

Increase accuracy of time billed to
clients and paid time off due employees

Higher amounts of foreign taxes
reclaimed

Increased efficiency through effective
domestic and nondomestic VAT
identification

Reduced employee time spent on travel
planning, expense reporting, time
capture, and purchasing of goods and
services
Infor ERP VISUAL Functional Overview
45
PERFORMANCE
MANAGEMENT
VISUAL Business Intelligence
Infor ERP VISUAL Business Intelligence
(VBI) offers pre-packaged views, as well as
in-depth customizable management views
and reports that allow users to analyze key
performance metrics. VBI‘s powerful
reporting tools provide clear answers about
what is happening with revenue or
operating costs and, more importantly,
highlight the factors that reveal why
situations occur. This allows managers to
make more strategic and profitable
business decisions.
By deploying VBI across their enterprise,
companies can take advantage of
complete OLAP (On-Line Analytical
Processing), graphing, and reporting
functionality. By manipulating and viewing
shared multidimensional information,
users can pool information in VBI from
across VISUAL and other in-house
applications. VBI also collects metrics
about multi-site operations and worldwide
sales statistics and combines this data
into a single view. With improved access
to critical information, and by avoiding the
time and cost associated with creating and
distributing reports, companies can save
money and focus on continuous
improvement.

Perform in-depth business data analysis
using query and reporting tools.

Collect metrics about multi-site operations and worldwide sales statistics and
combine this data into a single
Information View.
Infor ERP VISUAL Functional Overview

Create custom reports that include
exception highlighting, calculated fields,
rankings, and other features.

Choose the option of eDeployment;
VBI‘s Web Client offers full OLAP,
graphing, and reporting functionality,
which users can access via a network,
the Web, or e-mail.

Access key performance indicators and
scorecards and drill down to specific
information using an executive dashboard (Excel-based graphical display).
VBI will automatically send e-mail alerts
to notify personnel when the indicators
exceed a defined threshold.

Receive a clear picture of revenue or
operating costs and understand the
factors that reveal why situations occur;
get a clear, comprehensive view of your
business performance.

Make more strategic and profitable
business decisions with accurate data
available at the click of a mouse.

Eliminate time and cost creating and
distributing reports; save money and
focus on continuous improvement.
Use VISUAL Business Intelligence to
develop key metrics that measure your
success.
46
Management Reporting
Management Reporting provides powerful
data access and reporting tools for Infor
ERP VISUAL and VISUAL Financials,
allowing you to easily analyze and manage
enterprise and accounting data. You can
easily build customized queries and forms,
define business graphics, and create
complex cross-tabular reports. Additionally,
the system‘s throughput management tools
help you to pinpoint resource contention, or
bottlenecks, to improve your shop floor
schedules, increase on-time delivery and
improve profit.

Define queries, reports, and forms with
an easy-to-use graphical interface and
point-and-click technology.

Use report templates to simplify report
building.

Analyze data with a variety of built-in
features.

Define business graphics quickly.

Access secure, enterprise-wide data.
Infor ERP VISUAL Functional Overview
Use Management Reporting to build custom
reports to analyze the data you want to
analyze.
47
VISUAL Microsoft SharePoint Starter
Kit
Microsoft SharePoint is a powerful tool that
allows you to share documents and
collaborate with your co-workers. Now, you
can incorporate information from your
VISUAL database into your SharePoint site.
You can also access your VISUAL programs
directly from your SharePoint site.
The Starter Kit contains three VISUAL Web
Parts: a menu Web Part, a chart Web Part,
and a list Web Part. Infor provides the
source code for each of these Web Parts,
and you can use this source code as a guide
to develop your own Web Parts.

View metrics such as Top 5 Customers
by Revenue, Delivery Performance, and
Work Order Estimated vs. Actual Costs.
The chart Web Part offers over 15 KPIs.

View raw data from your VISUAL
database with the list Web Part. You
can choose from 15 list KPIs, such as
Bookings vs. Shipments, Sales
Bookings, and Vendor Price
Performance.

Drill back from the list Web Part directly
to VISUAL.

Filter the data so you view only the
information you want to see.

Access any VISUAL module from your
SharePoint site with the menu Web
Part.

Use the Web Parts as a guide to
develop your own Web Parts.
Infor ERP VISUAL Functional Overview
Use the VISUAL Microsoft SharePoint
Starter Kit to add information from your
VISUAL database to your SharePoint site.
48
VISUAL PLATFORM

Initiate approvals for workflow steps.
Workflow

Track individual workflow documents
throughout the process.

Ensure consistency and compliancy to
rules, policies, and procedures.
Infor ERP VISUAL Workflow allows
companies to automate their business
processes, integrating policies and
procedures with information flow according
to predefined conditions or rules. Workflow
is a business process management tool that
allows information to pass from one person
or department to another through a process
cycle. Predefined rules dictate courses of
action. Workflow allows you to ensure a
logical, repeatable flow that is specific to the
unique architecture of your business.
After defining a workflow, companies can
release this design into the Infor ERP
VISUAL system where it operates behind
the scenes. Various mechanisms notify
users of tasks and activities that require
action. The system can route information,
such as customer orders, purchase orders,
or engineering changes, to internal and
external participants in the business
process, incorporating approval functions
along the way. Users can also conveniently
track and monitor the status of documents
using Workflow.

Automate business processes.

Route documents throughout the
organization.

Create automatic email notifications.

Shorten the lifecycle of otherwise more
lengthy manual processes.

Create workflow tasks for users.
Infor ERP VISUAL Functional Overview
Use VISUAL Workflow to design the
processes you want your employees to use
as they perform their day-to-day business
tasks in VISUAL.
49
VISUAL Messages (Event
Management)

Request status information on
messages.
Infor ERP VISUAL Messages is a powerful
workflow communication tool for your
manufacturing business. It transmits
important information to the appropriate
person, either within or outside of your
company, using the familiar features of email. For example, you can automatically
send an e-mail message to your customer
when you ship their order. In addition to email, Messaging also delivers alerts to user
workstations, pagers, cellular phones,
printers, and fax machines.
You define the important events within the
business processes that trigger Infor ERP
VISUAL to create and transmit messages
to key personnel. This allows your employees to focus on other business without the
necessity of constantly ―checking in‖, while
ensuring that they will be informed of, and
can act on, critical information.

Generate and route automatic
messages to one or more recipients
based on events that occur within Infor
ERP VISUAL.

Specify standard messages, or define
your own variable content message.

Include binary data, pictures, bitmaps,
and text documents.

Direct messages to company e-mail,
Internet e-mail, user workstations,
pagers, cellular phones, printers, and
fax machines.

Choose between multiple event types,
including user-defined queries.

Set up automatic database queries.
Infor ERP VISUAL Functional Overview
Use VISUAL Messages to automatically
send important information to your
customers, suppliers, and employees.
50
VISUAL Data Import Utility
The Infor ERP VISUAL Data Import Utility
(VDIU) provides a Bill of Material and Part
import interface for third-party applications.
Import operations, materials, parts and subassemblies and supporting bill of material
information including specifications. The
third-party applications must generate a
properly formatted flat file (that follows
Application Program Interface guidelines) to
pass to the VDIU for import.
Users can run VDIU interactively or by
command line from an external program.
The VDIU will validate all fields, recalculate
required quantities, and produce a log of all
transactions during the import process.

Link third-party applications with Infor
ERP VISUAL.

Create Infor ERP VISUAL engineering
masters, work orders, and quotes from
external data.

Create new parts in Infor ERP VISUAL
from external data.

Manage imported data with a program
that validates fields, recalculates
required quantities, and maintains a
record of all transactions.
Infor ERP VISUAL Functional Overview
VISUAL Data Import Utility makes it easy to
import Bill of Material and Part information
from third-party applications.
51
Electronic Data Interchange (EDI)
Any organization that exchanges information
can use Electronic Data Interchange (EDI),
including enterprises involved in
procurement/purchasing, finance, trade and
transport, health, law, and revenue/tax
collection. EDI can help you reduce
paperwork and administrative lead times,
send timely business transactions, access
information quickly and easily, and eliminate
redundant data entry. These benefits allow
your enterprise to adopt more efficient
practices such as Just-In-Time, Quick
Response, and Direct Store Delivery.

Maintain fabricated and raw material
authorizations.

Cross-reference Customer Part IDs to
Infor ERP VISUAL Part Numbers.

Create outbound data files for ASN‘s,
Vendor PO‘s, Warehouse ASN‘s,
Material receipt notices and Invoices.

Track and enter orders using features
such as Ship-to by line item and delivery
schedule line.

Operate your integrated EDI processes
manually or in unattended or ―Hands
Off‖ mode.
To achieve the maximum benefit of
implementing EDI, you must integrate this
business process with your existing
enterprise systems. Infor ERP VISUAL Data
Interchange helps you accomplish this task
by providing a link between the EDI data
and your Infor ERP VISUAL software. This
optional module works with your EDI
software to import and export data between
your Infor ERP VISUAL database and the
EDI application. You can import firm
demand to customer orders, track cumulative quantities, and maintain fabricated and
raw material authorizations. In addition, the
customer order import allows you to
automatically access and update pricing,
units of measure, contact information, terms
of sale, and ship-to information if needed.

Create standard transaction to meet EDI
requirements of your trading partners.

Convert inbound EDI documents into
customer orders and forecasts.

Manage releases and ship schedules
from your customers.
Infor ERP VISUAL Functional Overview
Use VISUAL EDI to reduce paperwork,
conduct business transactions in a timely
manner, and eliminate redundant data entry.
52
VISUAL - Configurability
You‘ll find several features throughout Infor
ERP VISUAL Enterprise that help you
increase efficiency, find data, and customize
your experience.

VISUAL Search is a powerful search
tool you can use to find information in
your database. Enter a search term, and
the system returns records from various
modules that contain your search term.
You can open records directly from the
search results.

Set up Macros to automate common
actions that you perform again and
again.

Enhance your database records by
adding documents and graphics directly
to your records.

Customize VISUAL windows with the
Unify Object Nationalizer.

Create your own menus and toolbars so
you can access the third-party tools you
use most often directly from VISUAL.
Infor ERP VISUAL Functional Overview
Use the VISUAL Search Bar to find
information throughout your database.
53
ENGINEERING & ASSETS
VISUAL DesignLink
Infor ERP VISUAL DesignLink works with
®
applications such as AutoCAD from
Autodesk to seamlessly integrate your
engineering operations with your
manufacturing operations. This allows
enterprises to maintain and retrieve
engineering and manufacturing
information from a single, accessible
source, improving communication,
eliminating data entry, and ensuring
consistency.
When you use VISUAL DesignLink, you can
integrate VISUAL to applications such as
Autodesk AutoCAD to unite your
engineering operations and your
manufacturing operations.
With Infor ERP VISUAL DesignLink, you can
create a Bill of Material (BOM) or Parts List
within an existing or new drawing, and then
use that information to build an engineering
master, work order, or quote within VISUAL
Enterprise that includes both materials and
operations required in the manufacturing
process. It provides a dynamic link between
information in the AutoCAD drawing and the
Infor ERP VISUAL database, allowing you to
browse and add parts directly between the
two applications. Infor ERP VISUAL
DesignLink ensures control on the shop floor
by allowing you to maintain and track
engineering changes separately within Infor
ERP VISUAL without updating the original
drawing. This allows you to modify designs
at the shop level without changing the
original design template.

Allow engineering and manufacturing
personnel to access the same design
information within the context of their
typical working environment.
Infor ERP VISUAL Functional Overview
54
Infor Product Lifecycle Management
better respond to bids and minimize time to
market for standard or configured products.
Sharing critical business information across
the enterprise is essential for strategic
product lifecycle management (PLM). But
this requires organizing and managing data
from many disparate systems, then making
that data easily accessible to those who
need it. Infor PLM helps leading
manufacturers capture, share, manage,
track, and store documents, tasks, and
product information in a central data
repository. By making information more
accessible throughout the enterprise, PLM
empowers these companies to work better
and faster, increasing operational efficiency.
As time and cost pressures skyrocket, you
must consistently react with accurate costs,
better quality, and greater profitability. From
assessing the feasibility of initial requests to
broad and deep validation of incoming CAD
files for identifying version or date
mismatches to assessing the impact on
inventory, production, and sales, Infor PLM
provides access to more information, deeper
validation, and better change control.
Informed decisions, combined with
automated approvals and standard
integration to VISUAL, streamline the
process—without increasing risks or costs.
Everyone in your company will benefit from
Infor PLM 8, from individual users, to
managers, and executives— spanning
purchasing, production, engineering,
customer service, senior management, and
finance. At the user level, it prevents errors
by eliminating confusion about which version
of a document or design is the latest. At the
managerial level, it provides transparency
on the progress of projects, ensures
improved access to information and better
decision-making prevents delays, reduces
costs, and boosts efficiency. The solution
also facilitates global collaboration and
communication, as well as document
vaulting and change management.
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Companies react more reliably and
profitably with streamlined and repeatable
business processes, accurate information,
and smarter decisions. Whether in PLM,
CAD, or ERP, you‘ll benefit from role-based
access to relevant, accurate PLM, quality,
and operational data. When combined with
integrated workflows and programs, you‘ll
Infor ERP VISUAL Functional Overview
Vaulted document management
Document version control
BOM revision control
Workflow collaboration
Engineering change notices (ECN)
ECN approval process workflows
Security by project, user profiles & roles
Drawing viewer
Design ―What-ifs‖
BOM Comparisons
Optional CAD integrations
Vendor collaboration
Infor PLM provides access to more
information, deeper validation, and better
change control.
55
Plant & Equipment Maintenance

Plant and Equipment Maintenance
improves your ability to schedule
routine maintenance for internal or
customer-owned equipment in a
single system. You define the
resources that are performing the
maintenance and which product
equipment is affected by the
maintenance. You define the types of
activity what materials are needed and
how long they should take to
complete. Pictures and detailed
instructions guide maintenance
personnel through the required tasks.
Regularly scheduled maintenance
usually prevents most equipment
problems from occurring, but
unfortunately, unexpected problems
do arise. Plant and Equipment
Maintenance also helps you respond
quickly to unplanned repairs with
minimal effect on production and
delivery. The unplanned maintenance
records urgency and escalation as
well as cause and remedy for the
unexpected maintenance.
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Maintain multiple task schedules for a
single piece of equipment (daily, weekly,
monthly, annually).
Generate work orders for maintenance
tasks and remove production equipment
from the schedule while performing
maintenance.
Schedule labor resources to perform
tasks.
Use current labor reporting and material
handling principles already in place.
Plan for maintenance parts before you
are out of stock.
Assign service tasks to Regional and
Branch locations
Bill customers quickly and easily.
Log and track reported problems into
the intuitive ―Call Center‖ display
window.
Record detailed information about
unplanned maintenance activities
including Fault Type and Fault Codes,
Urgency and Escalation Codes, and
response Remedy Type and Remedy
Codes.
You use the same tools for labor
reporting, material planning for spare
or replacement parts, purchasing,
inventory control and scheduling as
you do for production. This prevents
having to learn another system to
perform maintenance and reduces the
learning curve and acceptance of the
maintenance system.

Maintain schedules for preventative
maintenance tasks for plant equipment,
internally-used products, and customerpurchased products.
Infor ERP VISUAL Functional Overview
Use VISUAL’s plant & equipment
maintenance to schedule maintenance tasks
seamlessly with your production schedule.
56
Infor Enterprise Asset Management
(EAM)
Infor Enterprise Asset Management is an
advanced asset management solution for
organizations what require best in class
control of their assets.
Capital assets often generate unseen costs
that turn profit into loss. If you don‘t pay
attention to the total cost of operating capital
assets, you may be passing up the
opportunity to ensure the success of your
business for months or years into the future.
Successful companies know that effective
enterprise asset management (EAM) does
more than add to the bottom line—it also
reduces risk and gives your business a
measure of stability that makes a big
difference in volatile business conditions.
Infor EAM delivers a time-tested solution
that helps your company increase the life
and value of assets, optimizes asset
utilization, decreases costs of operation, and
improves decision-making. It also gives you
an easy to use solution that you can
implement quickly.
Infor EAM is a powerful enterprise asset
management solution that enables small
and mid-size organizations to control critical
functions such as work orders, purchasing,
inventory, and preventative maintenance,
without the investment and extended
implementation time required for a largerscale installation. Designed for companies
with single or multiple sites, this solution
increases productivity while reducing
downtime by enabling organizations to
manage several essential business
functions from within a single web-based
solution
Infor ERP VISUAL Functional Overview
Infor EAM provides companies that have
small or no IT departments with a fullfeatured solution that delivers unparalleled
insight into operations and can fully integrate
with additional enterprise applications,
advantages typically reserved for
applications designed for large, multinational
corporations. The security model is also
uncomplicated, reducing installation time
even further. System users access the
features and functions of web-based Infor
EAM software through a browser, working
with an easy-to-use graphical user interface.
Features:

Graphical User Interface

Predefined Reports

Key Performance Indicators

Web Architecture

Minimal Hardware
Modules:
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Assets
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Work Management
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Preventive Maintenance

Materials Management

Purchasing

Mobile
57
Flexible buying and deployment options:
Infor now gives you unprecedented choice
over how you purchase, deploy, and
manage Infor EAM Business Edition. Now
you can get the power of Infor EAM
Business Edition three different ways:

On-Premises—Traditional perpetual
software license operated by the
customer on site

SaaS Hosted License—Traditional
perpetual software licensing with hosting
from Infor

SaaS Subscription—Customer
subscription for on demand usage
With such a wide range of deployment and
buying options for Infor EAM, your company
can choose the model that best meets your
business needs.
Infor ERP VISUAL Functional Overview
58
HUMAN CAPITAL
MANAGEMENT
Human Resources
Infor ERP VISUAL Human Resources is a
comprehensive data management and
reporting tool. It maintains vital data about
applicants and employees and provides
numerous standardized reports. The
flexibility of Infor ERP VISUAL Human
Resources allows you to track as much or
as little information as you require.

Use consignment tracking to monitor
assigned company property.

Improve overall corporate awareness
and provide a better level of service to
your workforce.

Grant level of security access by
processor.

Create or modify user-defined reports
and queries through Report Builder
and/or other third party report
writing/OLAP tools.

View, print, e-mail, or export data from
an assortment of standard reports.
Because of its dynamic integration with
Infor ERP VISUAL Payroll, the shared
data between the two applications
eliminates the need for repetitive data
entry, and ensures consistency and
accuracy.

Record and track job postings, applicant
information, interview notes, and results.

―Hire‖ an applicant to automatically
create an employee record in Infor ERP
VISUAL Payroll.

Track Time Accrual balance by
employee, including automatically
triggered increments, and reduction
from Infor ERP VISUAL Payroll
payments.

Record and track employee performance, education, salary, attendance,
seniority, and grievances.

Report and track accidents and workers‘
compensation claims.

Attach and preview files from several
tracking screens and gain convenient
access to critical information.
Infor ERP VISUAL Functional Overview
Use VISUAL Human Resources to manage
your current workforce and prospective
employees.
59
Payroll
wage assignment payments rather than
issuing paper checks.
Infor ERP VISUAL Payroll is a
sophisticated payroll processing and
reporting system. It is fully integrated with
Infor ERP VISUAL, VISUAL Financials, and
VISUAL Human Resources. Information
can easily be transferred between these
modules eliminating the need for repetitive
data entry and ensuring the integrity of your
data.
Infor ERP VISUAL Payroll supports all
federal and state taxes and includes stateof-the-art functionality such as direct
deposit, 401(k) plans, electronic tax and
wage garnishment remittance using ACH or
EFTPS payment systems, magnetic media
tax filing, and sophisticated report sorting
and timing features.

Import labor ticket entries from Infor
ERP VISUAL, including proper
breakdown of shift differential and
overtime hours.

Create templates for standard earning
and/or deductions to reduce data entry
and input errors, and ensure accuracy.

Correct input errors during processing,
without disruption.

Define company 401(k) plan(s),
establish automatic deductions by
employees, and automatically accrue
401(k) company matches.

Track company and/or 401(k) loan
balance and apply payroll withholdings
to debt repayment.

Set up electronic payments and use
ACH or EFTPS to generate tax and
Infor ERP VISUAL Functional Overview

Issue tax, assignment, and garnishment
payments
VISUAL Payroll handles sophisticated
payroll functionality. When you integrate
VISUAL Payroll directly to your Infor ERP
VISUAL, you can eliminate the need for
repetitive data entry and ensure the integrity
of your data.
60
VISUAL Time & Attendance
Infor offers a time and labor management
system: Infor ERP VISUAL Time &
Attendance. Available in a limited license
and full-scale offering, you can track
employee attendance, manual time sheets,
and manufacturing labor. You can configure
each data collection station to accept any or
all types of tracked transactions. Userdefinable compensation rules allow for
flexible work cycle and pay calendar
definitions, multi-level premium rules, and
shift differentials, among others. Infor ERP
VISUAL Time & Attendance fully supports
both piecework and incentive pay.
Infor ERP VISUAL Time & Attendance uses
the compensation rules when calculating
earnings, and exports the data to VISUAL
Payroll or other third-party payroll
processors.
Track the employee information you want to
track; hourly workers, pieceworkers, and
both exempt and non-exempt salaried
employees. Employees may be defined to
enter a timesheet instead of the Infor ERP
VISUAL Time & Attendance‘s standard
clocking functionality.

Enable supervisory electronic time
approval with electronic signature
capabilities prior to calculating employee
earnings.

Create extensive audit trails and
employee information histories upon
edits to time entries.

Take advantage of paperless manufacturing labor data collection, through the
use of multiple types of hardware and
direct interface to labor tickets.
Infor ERP VISUAL Functional Overview

Define holiday and payroll frequency
calendars, and use auto-clock
functionality to define breaks and meals,
as well as grace periods, then specify
whether they are paid or unpaid.

Generate standard work schedules
based on shift definition parameters with
the ability to update generated
schedules automatically.

Apply message trigger options to alert
users to specific events or milestones.

Synchronize your Infor ERP VISUAL
systems‘ data to reduce redundant data
entry.

Enable ―total time accounting‖ to comply
with DCAA collection methods.

Define different clock in and clock out
rounding rules with the ability to override
actual times with the scheduled time if
needed.

Assign employees to multiple user
defined groupings to enhance report
filtering.
Use VISUAL Time & Attendance to track
your employees’ time, whether they are
hourly workers, pieceworkers, exempt
employees, or non-exempt employees.
61
EDUCATION & TRAINING
Infor EPAK for VISUAL
Getting and keeping employees trained on
all your business processes and systems is
no easy task. Like most companies in the
current economy, you‘re trying to do more
with less—and the pressure on your
employees to get things right, the first time is
greater than ever. Add in new regulations
that force you to adhere to strict compliance
standards, and the need to document and
capture critical business processes
becomes even more critical.
The Infor Enterprise Performance
Accelerator Kit (EPAK) can help you meet
these challenges, so you reduce costs and
errors and recognize ROI more quickly.
EPAK is a collaborative content
development platform that drives end-user
and project team productivity throughout all
phases of the software ownership lifecycle.
EPAK pre-built application specific content
provides significant additional benefit
beyond the EPAK Developer for
organizations deploying Infor‘s applications.
Key to the value of EPAK application
specific content is that it is authored in tight
collaboration with the consultants in the field
that are implementing these applications
every day, thus creating content which
accurately reflects industry best practices
with detailed conceptual information.
Infor ERP VISUAL Functional Overview
62
There is a better way.
At Infor, we work with a core belief. We
believe in the customer. We believe that the
customer is seeking a better, more
collaborative relationship with its business
software provider. And a new breed of
business software: created for evolution, not
revolution. Software that‘s simple to buy,
easy to deploy, and convenient to manage.
Our 70,000 customers in more than 100
countries stand with us. We look forward to
your sharing in the results of our belief.
There is a better way. For additional
information, visit www.infor.com.
Disclaimer
This document reflects the direction Infor may take with
regard to the specific product(s) described in this
document, all of which is subject to change by Infor in
its sole discretion, with or without notice to you. This
document is not a commitment to you in any way and
you should not rely on this document or any of its
content in making any decision. Infor is not committing
to develop or deliver any specified enhancement,
upgrade, product or functionality, even if such is
described in this document.
Infor Corporate Headquarters
13560 Morris Road Suite 4100
Alpharetta, Georgia 30004
USA
Phone: +1(800) 260 2640
www.infor.com
Infor ERP VISUAL Functional Overview
63